Post * yQPMe — Curious Curator

› added 7 years ago

318

TIL: These red ticks called the Lone Star Tick can make you allergic to red meat with their bite.

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lokAa TIL researchers have been working for years to develop a strain of coffee plant which is naturally decaffeinated. While they made progress, there's a big drawback. Caffeine functions as a natural insecticide. By removing it from the plant, you leave the crop more vulnerable.

60w8 TIL Robert Maxwell, a noncombatant in WWII, was awarded the Medal of Honor for holding off a platoon armed with automatic weapons with 3 other soldiers using just .45 pistols and throwing himself on a grenade, absorbing the full blast. He is one of 7 surviving medalists, age 94.

0QWy TIL when soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo was asked to donate his cleats for a charity auction benefitting a 10-month-old child suffering from a brain disorder that can lead to 30 seizures a day, Ronaldo paid the full $83K cost of the surgery for young Erik Ortiz Cruz.

x6M55 TIL that the rate at which new words are added to languages has slowed in the digital era, and it's partly because the advent of automatic spell-checkers has given words recognized by these tools a "reproductive fitness" advantage, while non-standard spellings decline.

kOd14 TIL when being eaten or harmed, grass will release a chemical distress signal. This attracts parasitic wasps to lay eggs in the insect eating the grass. This chemical is actually what makes up the 'freshly cut grass smell' (Updated post, I messed up the last one)